Love Letter, The Sequel
by Tha1n0nlYVoyGirl
Summary: Do you remember the complicated Mariah? Here's her story.


Love Letter II, The Sequel   
  
Written by Voy_Girl 22/2 2003   
  
*********************   
  
***   
  
Mariah groaned in throbbing pain as she struggled   
  
to keep the 10 pound dumbbell as close to her   
  
shoulder as possible. Her left arm shivered,   
  
unnaturally bent as it was, and on top of it all,   
  
the onset of lactic acid kicked in.   
  
She was not a very fit woman, and soon the weight   
  
was too much for her and she dropped it mindlessly   
  
onto the hard, dull-colored floor. Spending her   
  
holodeck hours in the stuffy, boring surroundings   
  
of an artificial gym was not quite what she'd   
  
planned to do.   
  
"You shouldn't lift that much at once, you know."   
  
Mariah jumped and turned towards the shabby entrance   
  
and Cameron Emerett standing there.   
  
He had a blinding white towel around his neck; it   
  
really stood out from his dark hair, T-shirt and   
  
shorts.   
  
"It is an open program," he pointed out, like she   
  
didn't know what program she ran. And frankly,   
  
she didn't know either.   
  
"You shouldn't be alone when you use such advanced   
  
weights either. You could get hurt."   
  
He had a low, soft voice which Mariah found rather   
  
appealing. The words however...   
  
"That's nice of you to inform me. Perhaps you   
  
should make an old-time folder and hand it out   
  
outside the holodeck. In fact; you could leave   
  
the ops and seize the folders as your life's   
  
work!" Mariah was aware of how dry and shrill   
  
her voice was, but still she laid it on thick.   
  
"I'm going now anyway."   
  
Cameron cocked his head and stared at her with   
  
round eyes.   
  
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to annoy you. Please   
  
stay." He sat down on a bench, covered in blank   
  
leather. It was the kind of furniture you   
  
practiced weight-lifting at, while sitting or lying   
  
down. "And I am assigned to Engineering," he said   
  
softly.   
  
Mariah felt a wave of inappropriate blush creep   
  
over her already colored cheeks, due to the training.   
  
He worked in the same section of the ship as she did.   
  
And she'd never, ever noticed him down in Torres'   
  
domains.   
  
"So why are you here, Mariah, isn't it?"   
  
"Yes. Yes it is." She smiled awkwardly and dropped   
  
the beige duffel she'd already picked up on the   
  
floor again. She turned around, changed completely.   
  
"I'm just trying to get rid of that pink Valentine's   
  
cake Neelix threw around the mess."   
  
She straightened her worn, pink T-shirt out. And   
  
watched how Cameron picked up the weight, she'd   
  
dropped with a great hullabaloo, with ease.   
  
She coughed discreetly, ignoring her logic which   
  
told her to go to her quarters and read her usual   
  
book.   
  
Noticing a rack with more suitable dumbbells - a   
  
few pounds - she headed towards them, hoping she'd   
  
be able to lift at least the lightest -- and keep   
  
it in her damp hand.   
  
***   
  
"Crewman Emerett! Something wrong?"   
  
Cameron winced and turned to his commanding officer, who surely had glared over his shoulder for some time.   
  
"No, Lieutenant! Why would it?"   
  
"I usually check my staff when they have been pounding the same commands for minutes," B'Elanna said mysteriously and nodded at the console behind Emerett. "Something on your mind?"   
  
Cameron frowned at her sudden interest and politeness, but got himself together. "No... Nothing special."   
  
She folded her arms.   
  
"I swear, Chief!"   
  
She raised an eyebrow with clear disbelief.   
  
"It's nothing!"   
  
She took a step closer to him.  
  
"OKay, I wonder what Jones' problem is!"   
  
Cameron gulped when he realized he'd practically shouted into the face of the respectable woman.   
  
"Which Jones are you talking about?" B'Elanna already knew perfectly well who the only Jones with an apparent serious problem was.   
  
"Ensign Mariah, Lieutenant."   
  
Emerett pushed his surfacing panic deep down in his boots, where he hoped it would stay.   
  
"She nearly bit myhead of when I asked her out on a normal date!"   
  
"Strange..." B'Elanna mumbled. "I guess she wasn't as desperate as I thought."   
  
"Did you say something, Chief?"   
  
"No, Emerett. But perhaps I can help you."   
  
Cameron swallowed hard. "Oh."   
  
***  
  
"Absolutely not!" Harry Kim shook his head violently   
  
until it looked like it had down when he got up that   
  
morning. "You can't pair Emerett up with Jones!"   
  
B'Elanna Torres eyes sparkled cunningly. "Why not?"   
  
"He's the 'pure wool' type of guy. Neat and clean!   
  
And she's the manipulative --" A tray filled with   
  
someone's lunch fell conviniently to the floor   
  
behind them, cutting off harry's last word.   
  
"It can turn out good," B'Elanna watched Neelix race   
  
by with a cloth. "You might need one of those women   
  
too."   
  
Harry sighed, rolled his eyes and picked up his empty   
  
tray at the same time. "Just leave me out of it."   
  
*****  
  
  
  
Crewmember Jones fingered nervously at a seam on her pale yellow dress. The dark blue scarf   
  
around her neck added a nice contrast between the dress and her brushed out hair.   
  
The night at Sandrine's was unusually quiet, perhaps since nearly half of the character   
  
ensemble, the ones who could be considered disturbing, had been temporarily excluded. Now   
  
there were only a few left, alongside some organic crewmembers, such as officers Torres and   
  
Paris sitting at the bar.   
  
Mariah altered in-between channeling her surfacing disappointment and anger towards the   
  
blank, dark tabletop and giving B'Elanna an occasional glare.   
  
***   
  
B'Elanna was bored. To sit perched on a wobbly bar stool while observing her boyfriend   
  
discuss the best snack to go with scotch, with Sandrine, was not her idea of an ideal free   
  
evening.   
  
A fragile cough was heard behind her back, do B'Elanna turned a little to get a better view.   
  
The stool creaked loudly in protest.   
  
"You assured me Cameron would be on the holodeck tonight, right?" Mariah looked, to say   
  
the least, a little sulky. A disappointed tear glistened in the corner of her eye the whole time.   
  
"Wrong," B'Elanna sighed, prepared to correct the young woman. "I told him, that he could   
  
come here tonight, to spend time with some of his crewmembers. I told him you'd be here, and   
  
that he was very welcome to drop in."   
  
Someone shrieked out of joy when he won a tedious pool game, and caused Mariah to lose the   
  
thread several times. She stuttered, and the tear was dangerously close to launch itself down   
  
her cheek. B'Elanna desperately wondered why Mariah had turned down the first date.   
  
"Wow! Where's the beauty contest?"   
  
Mariah spun around with her heart in her throat and faced Cameron who suddenly had   
  
appeared out of nowhere. He was still in uniform but greeted the civil Torres almost   
  
nonchalant.   
  
"Thank you," Mariah blushed and pinched a little at the soft fabric she was clad in. "I thought   
  
we could as well take that date tonight."   
  
Cameron beamed like he'd won the grand prize, and everyone near was aware of how much he   
  
really liked that woman. He did no longer seem to care why she'd changed her mind so   
  
suddenly.   
  
He led her, all dressed up, to the table where she'd been sitting alone only minutes ago. It was   
  
like they had planned it all before, and even rehearsed it.   
  
Sandrine finished her deep conversation with Tom and sloped off to their table, as the   
  
professional barkeeper she was.   
  
B'Elanna still sat at her wobbly chair, and stared at Mariah who laughed incessant.   
  
She took a handful of greasy peanuts from the bowl in front of her and started to place them in   
  
her mouth, lacking greater interest.   
  
Her thoughts were unpleasantly occupied with the riddle Jones. B'Elanna sighed, munched at   
  
her nuts and gave up all hope of ever understanding that woman.   
  
***  
  
  
  
*****   
  
Barely a week later, Tom and Harry strolled through the lower hallways of Voyager, lively   
  
chatting about little the things in life.   
  
While chuckling in unison, they rounded a corner; only to stop short a few steps later, the   
  
laughter stifled for both of them.   
  
Mariah Jones leaned her back against the wall. She had folded her arms and looked at her feet,   
  
overexplicit; in a sulk.   
  
A few other crewmembers approached from the opposite direction of Tom, Harry and Mariah,   
  
while the talking and smiled. But after they'd passed Mariah, their visages expressed nothing   
  
but perplexity. They nodded solemnly at their senior officers and hurried on.   
  
"Crewman Jones?" Harry began softly, approaching the sobbing woman. "Something wrong?"   
  
"No," she whimpered and looked up at Harry with the biggest and saddest tear-filled eyes she   
  
could bring forth.   
  
"We can see that it is..." Kim frowned until the slowly appearing wrinkles between his brows   
  
formed a mad skein.   
  
Mariah sighed, "Cameron and I had a fight."   
  
"And because of that, you're crying openly in the hallway?!" Tom was annoyed. He was sick   
  
and tired of hearing B'Elanna talk about Jones and her overwhelming problems that nowadays   
  
had gotten their claws into B'Elanna and others too. "You have a serious problem; you're   
  
lacking an emotional barrier, for crying out loud!"   
  
Mariah merely stared. Blinked. Held quickly back a sobbing breath and stalked away down the   
  
hallway, her awkward, messy hair-do bobbing up and down.   
  
"Complicated," Harry muttered under his breath, talking to her back. When he noticed that   
  
Tom had turned and now walked back the same way they got there, he half ran the few steps   
  
which separated them. "What's the hurry?"   
  
"We're going to talk to Cameron Emerett," Tom answered resolute.   
  
"And I who specifically asked to be left out..." Harry sighed, but obediently followed his friend   
  
to deck 4.  
  
  
  
***   
  
"Whatever," Cameron sighed where he stood in the door to his quarters. he wore his black uniform pants, as well as an indigo pyjama top, revealing he was just about to turn in for the night. And sure enough; he looked tired and worn. "Mariah's had uncountable outbursts, but   
  
this time it went too far."   
  
"What did you say to her?" Tom asked and walked into the neat quarters, with a Harry, who played a waiting game, on his heels.   
  
"I told her to get a grip, at the same time I shook her bony shoulders. I guess I could have been more gentle, but crying in the hallway..." he rubbed his tired eyes and slowly scratched the back of his right leg with a bare foot.   
  
"It's not your fault," Harry assured and put an awkward hand on the young crewman's shoulder. "She's got a problem, and there is many onboard who are willing to help her."   
  
Emerett nodded, followed by a small smile. "Count me in. Despite my sloppy appearance, I've never been a quitter."   
  
Tom looked around in the almost empty living area and finally seated in one of two wicked chairs. "B'Elanna... Lieutenant Torres has combed out something interesting from Jones' personal file..." He winked, and while he continued talking, Cameron began to stretch his stiff facial muscles out to a genuine, but pale, smile.   
  
****  
  
  
  
  
  
Mariah was extremely bewildered. During her early, replicated breakfast, a woman she used to   
  
crawl through Jeffries tubes with had come up to her, patted her heavily on the shoulder and   
  
asked her how she was feeling. She had ended with 'everybody needs someone to take care of   
  
them' and left Mariah alone at her table again.   
  
She guessed she must look as restless, tired and jumpy as she felt. She chewed on her plain   
  
toast and let her mind wander. Was it so visible? The fact that the biggest struggle for her   
  
wasn't to survive from day to day, but to exist emotionally at all.   
  
Ever since she was young enough to take deep emotional damage, she'd had a hard time   
  
trusting other people. At all. During her last year at the Academy, her closest friend had been a   
  
cactus, which she kept in the window next to her bed. A place where she, every morning,   
  
would take a second to overlook the view outside; the wide lawn, the big tree and a huge   
  
building. She would watch the seasons come, change her framed world, to leave and be   
  
replaced. Exactly like her shallow friends during that time came, lied, and disappeared.   
  
***   
  
The next two days passed like in a slightly shifting blur for Mariah. All she did was work, eat,   
  
sleep, shower, work until she was exhausted, and then push her body to the limits to manage to   
  
work some more. And each night, when she went to bed, she felt an odd satisfaction in   
  
managing to not bump into Cameron.   
  
And every night, when she had placed herself under the soft covers, she read a chapter in a   
  
hard-bound book she'd replicated months ago. It was about a young boy who ran away from   
  
home, and stayed too far away, too long. Mariah hoped he would be greeted with tears of joy   
  
when he returned home. She had yet to read the conclusion, and her version actually did not   
  
appeal to her all that much. Because she knew, that would not be happening to her.   
  
During her darkest minutes, she made herself believe that what ever happened to the boy in the   
  
book, would turn out to be the complete opposite, in her case.   
  
  
  
*  
  
Warily, she paced around outside the holodeck entrance. No one in sight in either direction of the hallway. It was nearly ten minutes past the time Cameron had wanted to meet her. His message had been waiting for her when she got off her shift that same afternoon.   
  
Boiling with anger, and the bitter realization that he might not be coming at all, Mariah decided to step inside without him. Perhaps he already was.   
  
Just when she was about to take the few steps needed to enter, the sudden, steady pounding of those feared klaxon lights froze her moves. A red alert.   
  
Before she knew it, both Cameron and Commander Chakotay were behind her, gently pushing her down the hallways. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought that both men had come from the holodeck. Not what she had expected as a private way to talk things through, and so she pushed that thought away.   
  
"You're both going on an away mission. Now!" Chakotay responded her anxious, confused look and continued pushing her forward.   
  
Cameron ran past her, and continued ahead, while Chakotay still walked swiftly behind her.   
  
Mariah just let herself be swept along, though she knew were they were going. Other busy crewmembers appeared and disappeared like in a blur in front of Mariah's eyes.   
  
She'd only been on one real away mission before, and that had been over two years since.   
  
"Shuttle bay one," Chakotay hissed in her ear, at the same time he passed her and started jogging hastily.   
  
At this point, adrenaline took over Mariah's body, and she finally managed to snap into the perfect, purposeful Starfleet member, who knew her place and what she should do before she did it.   
  
Before she knew it, she ran head over heels.  
  
*  
  
Aboard the Flyer reigned a hectic, near frantic tempo. Every order or idea was executed under resolute silence and clenched teeth.   
  
Every now and then, when the steady stream of data to be treated stopped for the blink of an eye, Cameron and Mariah could glance up from their respective stations. They could exchange a look or two; and for the moment relieve their mutual wondering regarding why just them were chosen to that hastily mission.   
  
Voyager was caught in a flux of invisible gas, filled with particles and dust. Harmless on the surface, but when it was scratched open, the danger was revealed...   
  
The Delta Flyer was heading to an uninhibited planet fairly near the distressed ship, which according to the sensors, had many findings of a material they could use to modify a few torpedoes. In that way blast their way through the cloud. All according Seven of Nine's swift calculations, on which the whole crew had to rely.   
  
"We'll soon be able to see the planet for ourselves," Tom announced from his obvious spot at the helm, drawing an uninterested hm from Emerett, and no response whatsoever from Jones or the deeply concentrated Tuvok.   
  
When he faced such cool team members, Tom continued to focus his energy on routing a map to a safe landing place. He should simply let the others see their destination for themselves when the planet was within visual range.   
  
***  
  
Thick, never-ending lianas stretched over the surface, like vicious guards. The four man strong team wandered around in a damp forest, with blinking tricorders and every muscle tense.   
  
The planet had three climatic regions, one seeming worse than the other. The most vast zone was a dry, barren desert. The second began where the desert slowly turned into a swamp, filled with uncountable holes and ravines filled up to their edges with a beige, gluey liquid.   
  
The smallest region was also the one with the most inhospitable image. Huge trees, unpredictable bogs... and a damp, always present heat. Drops of moist formed and trickled down the sleek leaves, raining down on the ground directly beneath, turning it into mud .   
  
And, of course, the latter zone contained the most of the material they were looking for.   
  
"What are we doing in this rain forest?" Mariah complained and dragged her boot up from the deep unknown interior of a hungry, deceiving tuft, where it had sunk down.   
  
She saw how Tuvok and Paris exchanged looks, and she knew how they wondered why she of all people was with them. She wished she could clench her teeth, stop wining and toil along obediently, but her private shield of illusion had been taken over by the forest.   
  
Almost every trace of the perfect crewmember was yet again wiped away, melted by the sticky heat.   
  
*  
  
Somewhere deep inside the thickly foliaged forest, the group had stopped to brainstorm. They needed a solution, a concrete settlement to what their next step should be.   
  
"I think we should split up," Tuvok announced calmly, after listening to the younger people babble for a while.   
  
Cameron and Mariah both started to look nervously around, trying to find a spot where they could rest their eyes on something else but interpretable green. Soon enough they both settled for looked at one another as a safe, steady point.   
  
"Good idea, Tuvok," Tom complimented hastily, noticing the young couple's mixed eagerness and doubt. "I think Tuvok and I should go this way, since we both have fairly dry boots still, and... Whatever, just go that way you two."   
  
Cameron and Mariah smiled at Paris' feeble attempt to excuse himself and the Vulcan, and they quickly moved towards the natural path Tom had pointed out. It was surely there, ready for them to follow.   
  
"If we find something, we'll hail you!" Cameron howled while he tangled his sometimes unmanageable limbs out of a bush to the side of the thin path.   
  
"We will do the same." Tuvok's voice floated back to them, distant. It indicated that the two   
  
senior officers had begun their walk in the opposite direction.   
  
***  
  
They stumbled along insistent, both Cameron and Mariah pretended to grow more and more interested in where they put their feet, instead of actually talking to each other, when they finally were all alone.   
  
"Look at that!" Cameron suddenly gasped, his breathless voice filled with awe, the importance of feet forgotten.   
  
"It's a bunch of lianas," Mariah stated flatly as she caught up with him, causing her contemplated boyfriend's jaw to drop unflattering.   
  
"That is a piece of art!"  
  
"Art that we must balance our way over," Mariah sighed and rolled her eyes.   
  
Before them lay a deep ravine, stretching at least fifteen meters from their edge to the other side.   
  
"I'm reading a huge concentration of Seven's recommendation... On the other side." Cameron frowned when he studied the misfortunate readings on his tricorder.   
  
"Then we'll have to get there." She still sounded utterly bored, but at the same time she looked pretty resolute.   
  
"Mariah?"  
  
"Otherwise we'll be stuck here, right?" She pulled up the sleeves on her dirty uniform jacket until they reached her elbows, looked out over their fair share of work, and swallowed.   
  
The rift was wide, but several of those majestic trees had over the years stretched their branches over to the other side, and the many strong lianas that hung down from them had grown thick and into one another. They constricted an old-fashioned suspension bridge, thin at   
  
some places, lianas wired together to the size of a human thigh a others.   
  
Other lianas still hung free, straight down from the trees they sprung from, resembling to ropes.   
  
Cameron leaned as far as he could out over the ravine, tried to not look down at the landscape, which ran wild deep down in the steep cavity. He grabbed one of those loose lianas, and pulled it to him. "We can hold on to these." He tried to sound convincing and brave, for Mariah's   
  
sake, but he couldn't keep the uncertainty away form his voice.   
  
With resolution, he took as step out, onto the tough liana rug. "Can you believe I'm afraid of heights?" He squeezed out between clenched teeth.   
  
"Be careful!" Mariah gasped, unconsciously keeping her fingers crossed for his sake.   
  
"Don't you worry!" He whimpered helplessly as his next step strained the liana fibre and caused them to creak.   
  
"Take it easy!" She hissed with an unnatural, high-pitched voice.   
  
But Cameron didn't hear her; he shut out everything but the stout tree trunk immediately on the other side. Sure, he did concentrate on where to put his trembling hands and feet too, but overall nothing upset his plan. Even the occasional strained, sobbing breaths behind him had   
  
little effect. 


End file.
